managing electronic records in governmental bodies - National ...

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the AIIM International Standards website at http://www.aiim.org]
In order to prevent loss of information and loss of functionality and to ensure legal
admissibility and validity for audit purposes a migration programme should involve:
• establishing formal policies for migration to substantiate why specific options
for migration were chosen and how they were used;
• assigning responsibility for migration to a specific person or unit;
• assessing the impact of migration strategies on the integrity and utility of
records (including testing the approach on a sample of records before
implementing it);
• establishing and implementing an appropriate quality control procedure for
migration;
• documenting migration procedures and actions by preparing thorough and
complete documentation of any measures taken to convert records to new
formats (documentation should include the organisation's migration policy, the
reasons for selecting the specific migration option, the results of any tests or
evaluation of the impact of the method used, the specific methods used and
any known changes to the records that resulted from conversion and/or
reformatting as well as details about the old and new file formats).
The preservation of electronic records can be very costly in the long run if all records
generated electronically have to be migrated continuously. The appraisal of
electronic records at an early stage thus becomes more essential. By identifying
those records that need to be kept accessible for long periods of time and limiting
the migration process to only those records, the cost of migration can be kept at a
minimum.
4.1.4 Metadata
Metadata is descriptive data that gives context to electronic documents. Without the
necessary descriptive metadata attached a document cannot be considered to be a
record. Descriptive metadata gives information about where a document comes
from, who the creator was, when it was created, where it is located, etc. Metadata is
also information describing data and their systems; that is the background
information that describes how and when and by whom a particular set of data or a
record was created, collected or received and how it is formatted. It also includes
documentation on migration procedures and actions.
It is imperative that the necessary metadata should be captured to enable records to
be understandable in future. There are a number of international studies underway
to determine which metadata should be kept to ensure long term accessibility of
records. Since electronic recordkeeping systems’ design includes the capturing of
metadata as an inherent component of the system, most of the metadata elements
are system generated. Governmental bodies should however contact the National
Archives and Records Service to find out what metadata elements would be required
for the long term preservation of electronic records and should ensure that those
elements are captured by the electronic system and/or the users.
Managing electronic records_Policy Guidelines.doc
First Edition
Version 1.1
April 2003